‘Crashed off a bridge! What an idiot!’
‘Maybe he had an undiagnosed brain tumour. That would explain a lot. .’
‘Probably had a heart attack at the wheel. He was so out of shape. .’
‘His stepmother says his passenger robbed him at knifepoint. That’s how he lost control of the taxi. .’
Baldy Zhang pours Red Star baijiu into the other drivers’ cups. They drink to the memory of Driver Wang.
‘Seen his wife? She’s a weeping mess.’
‘Not bad, though, as far as weeping messes go,’ Baldy Zhang says slyly. ‘Should the poor widow be in need of comfort, she can come and weep on old Uncle Zhang’s shoulder. .’
‘Show some respect! At the dead man’s wake!’ Driver Liang laughs. He points to the kitchen ceiling. ‘Driver Wang is watching you now. He’s grinding his teeth and getting ready to punch your lights out!’
Baldy Zhang calls up to the ceiling, ‘Now now, Driver Wang. You wouldn’t want your wife to be lonely in her bed at night, would you? Old Uncle Zhang will keep her warm for you. .’
Laughter, another splash of baijiu in the cups, and they change the subject.
The widow and child of the deceased are on a sofa and, as a dazed spectacle of grief, Yida does not disappoint. ‘Poor Ma Yida,’ the guests whisper. ‘First her home burnt down, and now she’s widowed at thirty. It’ll be impossible for her to find another husband now. .’
Yida has been holding the same cup of tea on her lap for the past hour. Not sipped from once, the tea is stone cold. The wrinkled faces of elderly neighbours loom in and out of focus as they offer consoling words that Yida can’t hear. Echo is troubled to see her mother unable to hold a gaze, or finish a sentence. She looks sullenly at the middle-aged women who pat her on the head and say, ‘Oh, you poor child,’ and wills them to go away. They whisper to Lin Hong, ‘How your daughter-in-law is suffering. She looks like a ghost.’
Lin Hong nods, her chandeliers tinkling. ‘Looks awful, doesn’t she? Can’t eat or sleep and is barely functioning. I had to get my doctor to prescribe her some tranquillizers, just so she can shut down for a few hours each night. Still, how frightful she looks!’
Yida’s hair has not been washed in days, and her skin is blotchy and her eyes bloodshot from weeping. Lin Hong could advise Yida on how to reduce her eye swelling (with a few dabs of haemorrhoid cream), but she’ll be damned if she’ll pass on her beauty tips to the Anhui girl. Echo is the one Lin Hong is saving her advice for. She can’t wait to straighten Echo’s teeth and hair and give her lessons in how to use make-up to accentuate her eyes.
‘We heard the mother and child’s house burnt down. Where are they living now?’ a wife of one of Wang Hu’s former colleagues asks.
‘Why, here, of course!’ Lin Hong says. ‘Where else would they go? They are our responsibility now. The mother has plans to take Echo back to Anhui, but that won’t happen. Echo and I are very close and won’t be parted. She is like a daughter to me. Maybe the mother will return to Anhui alone.’
The cadre’s wife looks at Yida and shivers. What will become of this poor widow, now she has nothing left?
Yida rises from the sofa.
‘Ma, where are you going?’ asks Echo.
‘Kitchen,’ says Yida, and stumbles away. Echo can tell by her mother’s voice that she does not want her to follow.
Yida enters the kitchen. She walks up to the table of boozy taxi drivers, who look up at her in surprise.
‘I need a cigarette,’ she announces. ‘And a glass of whatever you are drinking.’
The six men leap to meet her need, nicotine-stained fingers fumbling for packs of cigarettes and lighters, proffering her the choice of three different brands. A glass is fetched and colourless grain alcohol poured in.
‘Mind if I join you?’ she asks.
They shake their heads and say they don’t, so Yida sinks into an empty chair, inhaling the fog of smoke and the musky odour that reminds her of her late husband. The drivers continue chatting awkwardly, but Yida is so quiet, they forget her after a few minutes and resume their sweary, bawdy banter. Yida smokes cigarette after cigarette down to the butt and knocks back glasses of liquor. Some of the guests, when they hear of this, couldn’t be more scandalized if the widow had squatted and peed on the kitchen floor. But Yida can’t see their disapproving looks from the doorway. The alcohol is mixing with the tranquillizers she took that morning and her vision is blurring, the kitchen slanting at a tilt. She slurs to Baldy Zhang, ‘You were my husband’s friend, weren’t you?’
Baldy Zhang clears his throat and admits, ‘We weren’t really friends. Your husband was a good man, but I don’t make friends easy. I’m a mean bastard, truth be told.’
A few knowing chuckles around the table. Yida is solemn as she waits for the laughter to die down. Then, her alcohol-limp tongue wrestling with words, struggling to shape them in her mouth, she says, ‘You are wrong. . He was not a good man.’
The drivers pause, then laugh uncertainly, spluttering smoke. A hysterical shrill to her voice, Yida continues, ‘He crashed that car on purpose to kill himself and the man in the passenger seat, who was his lover. He committed suicide, leaving his wife and child with not one fen to support themselves. So you are wrong, Baldy Zhang. My husband was not a good man.’
Yida looks around the table at the stunned and speechless drivers then stands up to leave. But no sooner has she risen, she keels over as the blood drains from her head and her knees buckle. Driver Liang leaps up, frowning as he catches her by the shoulders and supports her. Yida slumps in his arms, rolls her head towards him and smiles — her first smile in days. Driver Liang is two decades older than her late husband, but something about his strong arms and concerned expression agitates the itch of lust in Yida. Take me to the spare bedroom, Driver Liang, Yida thinks, and she laughs at the lewdness of her thoughts. The taxi drivers watch her uncomfortably.
‘Oh my goodness! Is everything all right?’ Lin Hong rushes to drag Yida out of Driver Liang’s arms, and attempts to stand her upright. ‘Accept my apologies. My daughter-in-law is not quite herself today. She needs to lie down. I hope she was not disturbing you.’
The taxi drivers watch as Lin Hong steers Yida out of the kitchen. Out in the hall, Lin Hong throws open the door to the guest room and points at the single bed.
‘Get in there and lie down,’ she snaps. ‘You are making a fool of yourself.’
Yida sways in the doorway, woozy and unable to focus. Lin Hong pushes her inside and slams the door. Pathetic, she thinks. But at least the ignorant Anhui girl has the sense to do as she is told.
By four o’clock the incense has burnt to ashes and the candles melted to stumps. The guests start leaving their empty glasses on the sideboard or coffee table, saying their goodbyes and heading for the door. Lin Hong pursues them out to the hall, standing over them as they rummage through the shoe pile for the pair they came with, and making threats to invite them round again. Then she follows them to the lift, waving and calling, ‘Thank you for coming!’ like a party hostess who doesn’t want the party to end.
As the elevator pings shut on another group of guests, a woman in her late fifties or early sixties shuffles out of the door leading from the stairwell, a shabby woman, whose padded Mao jacket and worn trousers remind Lin Hong of the days when everyone owned one set of hand-sewn clothes. Lin Hong looks at the woman’s lined skin and thinning hair, brittle enough to break in the teeth of a comb. Who in their right mind would climb ten flights of stairs in the July heat? The woman, who is not breathless or perspiring from the climb, moves with a slightly arthritic gait towards the open door of Lin Hong’s home.